Video (1:42): Real (1.23 MB) or Windows (1.04 MB), plus MP3 (1.12 MB).
In this instance, it was NBC’s hit series “ER,” and the show – about doctors, nurses, and patients in a hospital emergency room if you couldn’t guess – didn’t wait very long to take a jab at the White House (h/t NBer SpinyNorman).
In fact, the episode began with the staff being informed by desk clerk Frank Martin: “Homeland Security raised our threat level to orange this morning.”
Leading character Dr. Neela Rasgotra asked, “Well what does that mean exactly?”
Dr. Gregory Pratt quipped as he was walking by: “It means it’s an election year.”
Hmmm. What elections are happening this year?
Regardless of the political science gaffe, the lead patient of this episode, Kyle, was introduced after the credits rolled. He’s a young man that put his arm through a glass coffee table, and now has serious wounds. As he was being examined, we learned that he was in the military, and had done a tour in Iraq. One of his friends with him explained that Kyle never saw action over there, just “drove a desk.”
Kyle explained that he was “with intelligence. Worked as a translator.” The other friend in the room said, “He taught us how to swear in Arabic.” We found out that Kyle did “some missionary work over in Jordan for two years out of high school.”
As the episode continued, we found out that Kyle was addicted to codeine, and he actually steals a nurse’s keys to get into a medicine cabinet where he quickly swallowed a bottle of pills. After he’s restrained, Dr. Archie Morris asked, “What’s going on with this guy?”
The assisting nurse Samantha Taggart said, “It looks like textbook PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] to me.”
Morris responded: “No, he never saw combat. That’s what his buddy said. He was an interpreter.”
Dr. Tony Gates asked with an obvious message: “Who do you think translates during those interrogations?” I guess the actor playing the part, John Stamos, had read the script, and knew where the episode was heading, and the statement it was going to eventually make on this subject.
With that in mind, after Kyle had his stomach pumped, Morris asked him what was going on, and what the words meant that he was shouting in Arabic as they were trying to restrain him. Kyle responded in Arabic, and then translated:
‘Please don’t hurt me. I’ve done nothing wrong. God have mercy.’ I must have translated a million times in Iraq, man. It didn’t matter. They didn’t listen to me any more than they listened to prisoners.
Morris asked, “Who didn’t listen to you?”
Kyle replied, “The interrogators. The interrogators, they didn’t…” At this point, Kyle broke down crying and shaking.
Nurse Taggart, with a shocked look on her face asked, “You saw them beat the prisoners?”
Kyle replied through his tears: “Beat, burn, other things.”
The camera moved to Morris, who said with a thoroughly shocked and disgusted expression on his face, “You mean torture?”
Kyle replied:
Most of them that we questioned didn’t even know anything. They were innocent. I tried to convince the interrogators, but they didn’t believe me.
Somber music had been in the background the entire scene. But, at this point, the choir came in almost with a death mass. Kyle continued: “So, they kept hurting them. Everybody just kept translating their cries.”
Morris said soothingly: “It’s not your fault. We’re going to get you some help.”
Kyle replied: “I don’t want to go back to see VA, man.”
Morris answered:
You’re not. Not right now. You’re going to stay with us for a while. Okay?
Kyle responded: “Okay.”
And folks wonder why so many Americans respond to polls saying that they’re against the war. As if they don’t get enough of this posturing from the news media, now it seems such sentiments need to be forced down folks’ throats even when they’re trying to be entertained. In this instance, the viewer must have wondered whether this was an NBC drama or a Michael Moore schlockumentary.
Sadly, there was more political posturing left in this episode, for in the very next scene, Dr. Rasgotra was shown walking to and through an antiwar rally as Jeff Buckley’s song “Hallelujah” played in the background:
And I've seen your flag on the marble arch
And Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken HallelujahHallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
As the scene moved from the antiwar rally, back to the hospital, we were treated to a dressing down by the new ER chief of staff Dr. Kevin Moretti, who has been actively observing the goings-on throughout the episode. In this scene, Moretti was angrily tearing the staff apart for errors they made with a patient who almost died despite “all the attempts that we made to kill her.”
Moretti then went through each division of the ER, and what mistakes they made concerning this patient. He said to a protesting Dr. Pratt: “See, again, you’re arguing that incompetence and sloppiness are the norm, and that’s no way to impress me.”
At that point, Moretti was making the case that the doctors and nurses involved with this patient did an inadequate history and physical (H and P) to determine a diagnosis and course of action.
Coming just after a scene wherein a member of the army was discussing torture in Iraq, and another doctor walked through an antiwar march, one got the feeling that Moretti wasn’t scolding his staff, but, instead, making a statement about intelligence before the war began and the Bush administration:
Based on the incomplete H and P, which he took, and you accepted at face value. Your intern led you down the primrose path. You sold that to the attending Dr. Pratt, and then the three of you blindly walked Mrs. Calder right along with you to death’s door.
Sound like claims made by the left and the media concerning the White House and Iraq? Coming right after the antiwar scenes previously described?
Consider this. After Pratt defended his actions stating “sepsis was a viable diagnosis,” Moretti went almost ballistic banging his clipboard on the desk: “Nobody took a decent history.” Moretti then went into a monologue about the value of looking at a patient’s history:
What I want is for us to live in mortal fear of doing something wrong, of missing something, and having somebody else pay the price for that. And I want us to use that fear to make us better. I am not here because I need the work. I’m here because I want to save the world. And the way we’re going to do it is we’re going to reinvent the way we practice medicine every day right now, right here on the front.
After a brief, private discussion between Moretti and nurse Abby Lockhart, the scene immediately shifted back to Rasgotra at the antiwar rally, and a speaker saying at the podium:
It’s not political. It’s not Republican or Democrat. It’s about young lives lost every day. Every day. And knowing when to say we’ve done what we could, and maybe it’s time for us to go home.
At that point, Dr. Gates was also shown at the rally, approaching Rasgotra, when a bomb or grenade went off in the crowd. Role credits.
Still think Moretti was speaking to the staff about problems in the ER? Or, in the middle of this episode chock full of antiwar messages, was his rant at the end more to the Bush administration?
I vote the latter; how ‘bout you?
